War Dragons: A Complete Guide to Pocket Gems' Dragon Strategy Game

By Nham Vu · Updated July 2026

War Dragons is a real-time strategy game from Pocket Gems where you breed, train and fly a personal army of dragons into base raids and guild wars. It launched in April 2015 for Android and iOS and it is still receiving content updates, with the version I looked at (6.60+gn) landing in early 2022 and later builds following the same core loop.

I have spent a lot of hours in games in this genre, and what sets War Dragons apart is how much of the strategy sits outside the raid itself. Breeding paths, rune loadouts, tower placement and guild coordination matter as much as your thumb speed during an attack. If you are new, or you played years ago and are wondering what changed, this guide breaks down the parts that actually decide whether your dragon army wins or gets torched.

How Do You Play War Dragons for Beginners?

War Dragons starts you with a single dragon and a small base, and the early hours are mostly about building resource structures and breeding your second dragon. The tutorial walks you through your first attack, but it glosses over how breeding odds and egg timers actually work, which is where a lot of new players get stuck.

In practice, the fastest way to get comfortable is to focus on one thing at a time instead of upgrading everything at once. Rushing your barracks and a couple of defense towers first keeps your base safe while you learn the attack controls in low-stakes PvE runs against AI bases.

• Finish the tutorial attacks before touching guild raids
• Upgrade your egg incubator early so breeding queues never sit empty
• Build at least one defense tower before you go looking for a guild
• Save gold for dragon upgrades rather than cosmetic purchases

What Dragons Can You Get in War Dragons?

War Dragons has hundreds of dragons across multiple elemental classes, each with its own attack style, breath weapon and passive abilities. Dragons get bred by pairing two existing dragons in the incubator, and rarer breeds usually require specific parent combinations and a fair bit of patience.

What trips up new players is treating every dragon as interchangeable. The best players I have seen specialize hard, building loadouts around two or three dragons that pair well with their rune and rider setup rather than chasing every new release. Element matchups against enemy towers matter more than raw dragon level once you get past the early game.

How Does Guild Play Work in War Dragons?

Guilds are the backbone of War Dragons and joining one is effectively required to progress past the early game. A guild gives you access to team events, shared defense against raids, and the coordinated attacks that dominate the game's competitive seasons.

Communication is the real differentiator here. Guilds that use a Discord server or forum alongside in-game chat tend to organize attack timing and rider assignments far better than ones relying on the game's built-in messaging alone, which is why so many active War Dragons communities run a Discord in parallel.

Can You Play War Dragons on PC?

War Dragons is built as a mobile title for Android and iOS, and Pocket Gems has not shipped an official PC client. Players who want a bigger screen typically run the Android version through a third-party Android emulator on Windows or Mac, which mirrors the touch controls to mouse and keyboard.

This works reasonably well for base management and breeding screens, though fast-paced raid attacks can feel less precise with a mouse than with a touchscreen. If you go this route, keep your emulator settings close to the phone's native resolution so tower and dragon hitboxes line up the way they do on mobile.

What Are the Best Early Tips for War Dragons Attacks?

Attacks in War Dragons are timed raids where you fly dragons over an enemy base, targeting resource buildings and towers while dodging or absorbing defensive fire. Positioning and pacing matter more than button mashing, since flying too many dragons in at once often gets them shredded by combined tower fire.

The pattern I keep seeing among stronger players is patience: they scout the base layout for a few seconds, pick a flight path that avoids overlapping tower ranges, and stagger their dragons instead of dumping them all in one wave.

• Scout tower placement before committing your first dragon
• Stagger dragon releases instead of sending your whole roster at once
• Target resource buildings early to reduce incoming defense buffs
• Match dragon element against the strongest nearby tower type

Where Can You Find War Dragons Wikis, Forums and Community Help?

The War Dragons community keeps an active fan wiki that documents breeding paths, egg combinations, rune effects and rider stats in far more detail than the in-game help screens. There is also an official community and forum section on the game's own site alongside an active subreddit and Discord where players trade breeding advice and guild recruitment posts.

If you are trying to plan a specific breed or figure out why a rune combo underperforms, these community resources are usually faster than trial and error, since dedicated players have already mapped out most of the breeding math.